Every time I brew, I check my kettle for issues, then brew, then clean up. I NEVER put my kettle away dirty, and after listening to the Cleaning episode of Brew Strong, I use Bar Keeper's Friend exclusively on my kettle. Well, yesterday, before I brewed, I checked my kettle. It looked great, so I brewed with it. Then I cleaned up, got it all scrubbed up and shiny, then looked very closely for a final inspection. It looks like I have pitting in the bottom of my kettle. No idea how it happened, I have very low chlorine levels in my water, I always hand dry it after cleaning, and I never use steel wool. (Also, when I dry it, the drying cloth gets tinted a dark gray color...like it's covered in aluminum dust.)
I don't have any rust on it, and I've heard there are ways to arrest the pitting. It's just an unmodified 6 gallon Bayou Classic pot (I'm guessing 304 grade), but I don't want to have to replace it. Do I need to, though, or am I fine to use it for a while? I'm mostly concerned with health issues since consuming metals probably isn't the best thing for me. Or the yeast. Or my friends.
I tried to download the Stainless episode of Brew Strong today, but either the BN server is having issues or it's convinced that I've reached the download limit despite the fact that I haven't downloaded any episodes since yesterday morning (and I only snagged two). So rather than waiting until I can listen to the episode (since I'm OCD and tend to FREAK OUT about this stuff), I figured I'd see what the BNArmy could recommend. I want to e-mail John Palmer, too, to see if he has some extra tips that I haven't heard, but I don't know his BN email address and can't find it on the site.
Thanks everyone for the help!